Thanks to a web of bad laws and loopholes, Americans are paying outrageous prices for medicines. Here’s how it happened – and how we can fix it.

From EpiPens and insulin to cancer medicines and hepatitis C treatments, patients and families across America are getting hammered by prescription drug corporations charging unfair and unaffordable prices.

Medicare Part D — the program that covers prescription drugs for senior and disabled citizens — accounts for seven percent of global prescription drug spending, but there are explicit rules that prohibit the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) from leveraging that immense bargaining power to negotiate better prices.

Our government also grants long monopoly periods to drug corporations through special marketing exclusivity rules at the Food and Drug Administration and through patents,even when taxpayer money helped to develop their drugs.

Congress should pass rules to stop drug companies from gamingthesystem to get longer monopolies just because of minor tweaks to old medicines, as well as other abusive practices that prevent and delay price-lowering competition.

Another key measure in bringing down drug prices is aggressive price negotiation with prescription drug corporations. Congress needs to pass rules to unbind HHS’s hands and allow it to negotiate Medicare’s drug prices directly with prescription drug companies to get lower prices. Doing so could save Medicare Part D up to $16 billion a year if the program secured the same discounted prices as Medicaid or the Veterans Health Administration, according to a study by Carleton University and Public Citizen.

But all of this is going to require grassroots pressure to let elected officials know that the status quo is not acceptable.